`THREE KINGS' CAN TAKE A BOW.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

David O. Russell's ``Three Kings'' weaves elements from a wide range of war movies into a pattern that's unique, fresh and quite marvelous.

Starting out as a jaunty, irreverent treasure hunt in the Iraqi desert, the film grows into an authoritative moral comedy. Ingenious specifics gather profound metaphoric resonance as director Russell, who wrote the ``Kings'' screenplay from an idea by John Ridley, wrestles with the complications of Operation Desert Storm - a war that was fought against complex interpretation as fastidiously as it was against Saddam Hussein.

The movie strikes a surreal note immediately. Its first spoken words - ``Are we shooting?'' - both express soldiers' confusion about the state of their mission and call into question any way we might have looked at the conflict. We're in a vast, arid landscape, among a handful of American troops who've just won the Persian Gulf War without, most of them, firing a shot. An Iraqi emerges from a bunker, clearly to surrender; but with a gun still in hand, he's a chance for the bored victors to squeeze off a little action before it's too late.

An opportunity for more rewarding action soon arises. In a hilariously vulgar manner typical of the film's absurd and cutting humor, three reservists - recent father Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), religious baggage handler Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and dumb country boy Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) - find a map on a captive enemy. A cynical Green Beret veteran, George Clooney's Capt. Archie Gates, swoops down on the green trio, decides the map leads to a horde of looted Kuwaiti gold, illegally commandeers a Humvee and is soon leading our heroes deep into Saddam-held territory.

Finding the loot, along with great stashes of consumer goods ranging from cell phones to luxury cars, is easy. Getting away with it proves much more difficult, but not for reasons Gates' raiders could have anticipated.

Saddam's soldiers are much less concerned about keeping the dictator's booty than suppressing the Shiite uprising President Bush has called for. Confronted with an army massacre of underarmed civilians, our boys must decide whether they're going to act like Americans or act like Americans - get away with the fortune they've won fair and square, or make a humanitarian stand that their own command will not.

In the cinematic equivalent of turning a whole army on its flank, Russell deftly maneuvers the attitude of ``Three Kings'' from ``Kelly's Heroes'' high jinks through ``MASH''-like critical satire and its thematic opposite, ``Casablanca''-style sacrifice and commitment.

That's enough of an accomplishment for any director, especially one whose previous experience has been with insightful but small-scale romantic comedies (``Flirting With Disaster,'' ``Spanking the Monkey''). But Russell does much more here as he unleashes a bombardment of original, loaded images in a disorienting variety of film styles and stocks.

The real price of this supposedly low-cost victory is best depicted by the U.S. soldiers' forced interactions with the Iraqi people - and not just those victims of Saddam's wrath. ``Three Kings' '' most audacious scenes occur between Wahlberg's captured Barlow and Said Taghmaoui's Republican Guard interrogator. The latter is a devout sadist and skillful (thanks to CIA training) torturer - and a grieving father with an incisive geopolitical viewpoint. The bond that develops between these two is astounding, totally unexpected and ever so oddly but palpably humane.

It's emblematic of everything that makes ``Three Kings'' the war movie of, and for, a terribly complicated decade.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Three Kings'' (R; violence, language, sex, nudity, children in jeopardy).

The stars: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, Nora Dunn, Cliff Curtis, Said Taghmaoui.

Behind the scenes: Directed by David O. Russell. Written by Russell, from a story by John Ridley. Produced by Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt and Edward L. McDonnell. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: One hour, 50 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Four stars.